Environment and Local Substrate Availability Effects on Harem Formation in a Polygynous Bark Beetle.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Griffin MJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7912661 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Alternative mating strategies are widespread among animal taxa, with strategies controlled by a genetic polymorphism (Mendelian strategy) being rarer in nature than condition-dependent developmental strategies. Mendelian strategies are predicted to have equal average fitnesses and the proportion of offspring produced by a strategy should equal the equilibrium proportion of individuals representing the strategy in a population. Developmental strategies are not expected to produce offspring in equilibrium proportions; however, whether the alternative phenotypes should have equal average fitness is debated. The Wellington tree wētā (Hemideina crassidens) (Orthoptera: Anostostomatidae) is a harem polygynous insect in which intense sexual competition has favoured the evolution of three alternative mating strategies that differ in weapon size and the ability to fight for control of harems. Here, we use molecular genotyping to test the hypothesis that the alternative strategies in this species are maintained by having equal relative fitness and that morphs produce offspring in equilibrium proportions. As expected, the average relative fitness of the three strategies did not significantly differ and the proportion of offspring produced by each morph is equal to the frequency of that morph in the population. Our results support the hypothesis that the alternative male morphs in H. crassidens represent Mendelian strategies.
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2023-11-08 | PXD035407 | Pride
Project description:Bark beetle outbreaks have intensified in many forests around the globe in recent years. Yet, the legacy of these disturbances for future forest development remains unclear. Bark beetle disturbances are expected to increase further because of climate change. Consequently, feedbacks within the disturbance regime are of growing interest, for example, whether bark beetle outbreaks are amplifying future bark beetle activity (through the initiation of an even-aged cohort of trees) or dampening it (through increased structural and compositional diversity).We studied bark beetle-vegetation-climate interactions in the Bavarian Forest National Park (Germany), an area characterised by unprecedented bark beetle activity in the recent past. We simulated the effect of future bark beetle outbreaks on forest structure and composition and analysed how disturbance-mediated forest dynamics influence future bark beetle activity under different scenarios of climate change. We used process-based simulation modelling in combination with machine learning to disentangle the long-term interactions between vegetation, climate and bark beetles at the landscape scale.Disturbances by the European spruce bark beetle were strongly amplified by climate change, increasing between 59% and 221% compared to reference climate. Bark beetle outbreaks reduced the dominance of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) on the landscape, increasing compositional diversity. Disturbances decreased structural diversity within stands (α diversity) and increased structural diversity between stands (β diversity). Overall, disturbance-mediated changes in forest structure and composition dampened future disturbance activity (a reduction of up to -67%), but were not able to fully compensate for the amplifying effect of climate change. Synthesis. Our findings indicate that the recent disturbance episode at the Bavarian Forest National Park was caused by a convergence of highly susceptible forest structures with climatic conditions favourable for bark beetle outbreaks. While future climate is increasingly conducive to massive outbreaks, the emerging landscape structure is less and less likely to support them. This study improves our understanding of the long-term legacies of ongoing bark beetle disturbances in Central Europe. It indicates that increased diversity provides an important dampening feedback, and suggests that preventing disturbances or homogenizing post-disturbance forests could elevate the future susceptibility to large-scale bark beetle outbreaks.
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Project description:Bark beetles (sensu lato) colonize woody tissues like phloem or xylem and are associated with a broad range of micro-organisms. Specific fungi in the ascomycete orders Hypocreales, Microascales and Ophistomatales as well as the basidiomycete Russulales have been found to be of high importance for successful tree colonization and reproduction in many species. While fungal mutualisms are facultative for most phloem-colonizing bark beetles (sensu stricto), xylem-colonizing ambrosia beetles are long known to obligatorily depend on mutualistic fungi for nutrition of adults and larvae. Recently, a defensive role of fungal mutualists for their ambrosia beetle hosts was revealed: Few tested mutualists outcompeted other beetle-antagonistic fungi by their ability to produce, detoxify and metabolize ethanol, which is naturally occurring in stressed and/or dying trees that many ambrosia beetle species preferentially colonize. Here, we aim to test (i) how widespread beneficial effects of ethanol are among the independently evolved lineages of ambrosia beetle fungal mutualists and (ii) whether it is also present in common fungal symbionts of two bark beetle species (Ips typographus, Dendroctonus ponderosae) and some general fungal antagonists of bark and ambrosia beetle species. The majority of mutualistic ambrosia beetle fungi tested benefited (or at least were not harmed) by the presence of ethanol in terms of growth parameters (e.g., biomass), whereas fungal antagonists were inhibited. This confirms the competitive advantage of nutritional mutualists in the beetle's preferred, ethanol-containing host material. Even though most bark beetle fungi are found in the same phylogenetic lineages and ancestral to the ambrosia beetle (sensu stricto) fungi, most of them were highly negatively affected by ethanol and only a nutritional mutualist of Dendroctonus ponderosae benefited, however. This suggests that ethanol tolerance is a derived trait in nutritional fungal mutualists, particularly in ambrosia beetles that show cooperative farming of their fungi.
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Project description:Bark beetle outbreaks and forest fires have imposed severe ecological damage and caused billions of dollars in lost resources in recent decades. The impact of such combined disturbances is projected to become more severe, especially as climate change takes its toll on forest ecosystems in the coming years. Here, we investigate the impact of multiple disturbances in a demographically heterogeneous tree population, using an age-structured difference equation model of bark beetle outbreaks and forest fires. We identify two dynamical regimes for beetle and fire dynamics. The model predicts that fire helps dampen beetle outbreaks not only by removing host trees but also by altering the demographic structure of forest stands. We show that a stand thinning protocol, which reduces the population size of the largest few juvenile classes by a small percentage, is able to significantly reduce beetle-induced tree mortality. Our research demonstrates one approach to capturing compound disturbances in a mathematical model.
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Project description:Long distance dispersal to locate suitable breeding sites is recognized as a key trait influencing the population dynamics and distribution of bark beetles and other saprophytic insects. While dispersal behavior has been studied for a range of aggressive 'tree killing' bark beetles, few have considered the dispersal behaviour of non-aggressive saprophytic bark beetles that utilize kairomones (host volatiles). We present the results of a mark-recapture experiment that examined adult dispersal patterns of the saprophytic bark beetle Hylurgus ligniperda. Releases took place in summer and autumn 2014, in a clearcut pine forest in the central North Island, New Zealand. Both flight-experienced and flight-naïve adults were marked and released in the center of a circular trap grid that extended to 960 m with 170 or 200 panel traps baited with a kairomone blend of alpha-pinene and ethanol. Of the 18,464 released H. ligniperda, 9,209 (49.9%) of the beetles flew, and 96 (1.04%) of the beetles that flew were recaptured. Individuals were recaptured at all distances. The recapture of flight-experienced beetles declined with dispersal distance, and a diffusion model showed heterogeneous dispersal tendencies within the population. Our best model estimated that 46% of flight-experienced beetles disperse > 1 km, and 1.6% > 5 km. Conversely, no declining pattern was shown in the recapture of flight-naïve beetles, suggesting that emerging H. ligniperda may require a period of flight to initiate chemotropic orientation behavior and subsequent attraction to traps. We discuss the implications of these findings for the management of phytosanitary risks. For instance, combining landscape knowledge of source populations with dispersal processes facilitates estimation of pest pressure at economically sensitive areas such as harvest and timber storage sites. Quantitative dispersal estimates also inform pest risk assessments by predicting spread rates for H. ligniperda that has proven establishment capabilities in other countries.
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Project description:The importance of symbiotic microbes to insects cannot be overstated; however, we have a poor understanding of the evolutionary processes that shape most insect-microbe interactions. Many bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) species are involved in what have been described as obligate mutualisms with symbiotic fungi. Beetles benefit through supplementing their nutrient-poor diet with fungi and the fungi benefit through gaining transportation to resources. However, only a few beetle-fungal symbioses have been experimentally manipulated to test whether the relationship is obligate. Furthermore, none have tested for adaptation of beetles to their specific symbionts, one of the requirements for coevolution. We experimentally manipulated the western pine beetle-fungus symbiosis to determine whether the beetle is obligately dependent upon fungi and to test for fine-scale adaptation of the beetle to one of its symbiotic fungi, Entomocorticium sp. B. We reared beetles from a single population with either a natal isolate of E. sp. B (isolated from the same population from which the beetles originated), a non-natal isolate (a genetically divergent isolate from a geographically distant beetle population), or with no fungi. We found that fungi were crucial for the successful development of western pine beetles. We also found no significant difference in the effects of the natal and non-natal isolate on beetle fitness parameters. However, brood adult beetles failed to incorporate the non-natal fungus into their fungal transport structure (mycangium) indicating adaption by the beetle to particular genotypes of symbiotic fungi. Our results suggest that beetle-fungus mutualisms and symbiont fidelity may be maintained via an undescribed recognition mechanism of the beetles for particular symbionts that may promote particular associations through time.
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